For Adrian Pang, competing inside the ONE Championship cage is about more than simply winning a world title – it’s about proving he can still throw down with the best in the world.
Pang takes on rising star Amir Khan at ONE: IMMORTAL PURSUIT, and is looking to gatecrash the lightweight world title picture after a rollercoaster career spanning 34 bouts and multiple championships in a host of promotions.
The ONE Lightweight World Title would bring the sort of stardom Pang could only have dreamt of as a youngster growing up in poverty in Papua New Guinea.
“We did not have much. But when you do not have much, then you do not know what you are missing out on,” he said.
“We were properly poor, and if you saw the house we lived in, it looked like a shanty house. But my dad, he is now one of the most successful men in Papua New Guinea, and he is my inspiration.”
Pang’s father James was a successful windsurfer and yachtsman, winning national titles. He competed internationally for Papua New Guinea, and was a source of great inspiration to young Adrian growing up.
“I used to always watch him and want be like him,” he admitted. “I wanted to be champion in something one day. I just did not know what it was going to be.”
While Pang didn’t retrace his father’s footsteps in water sports, he found a sporting avenue of his own. It all started when he, his brother, and his friends started watching Bruce Lee movies on video.
“We watched kung fu movies out of Hong Kong, and my friends and I tried to ‘Bruce Lee’ the crap out of each other,” he laughed.
“I think it was because he was Chinese martial artist who did kung fu, which we could relate to.
“He was one of the first martial artists that could combine styles together, and that is what appealed to me. He would box and kick, and have his bit of wrestling.
“It was not movies where it is like, ‘I do not know if this would actually work.’ He was a real, genuine martial artist that brought people together, and found out what works for one person may not work for somebody else, and I really like that philosophy.”
Pang and his brother moved to Australia to live with his mother, and within two years he was training in kung fu. By the time he hit 23, his martial arts passion switched gears when he discovered the legendary Brazilian jiu-jitsu skills of Royce Gracie.
Pang then started cross-training in different martial arts disciplines, jumping into the cage for his first professional bout in November 2001.
Initally, he worked a second job as a joiner alongside his martial arts career, and used a AUD$50,000 loan from his father to equip a shed with all the tools he needed to make a success of his day job.
As his successes inside the cage started to rack up, he gradually gravitated towards martial arts as his main source of income, and eventually shut down his joinery and converted it to a yoga studio, with a pair of gyms behind it, becoming a landlord in the process.
Add that to his highly-successful Integrated MMA gym, and Pang could leave a comfortable life indeed, all without having to step into the cage.
However, his focus is fixed on world championship success, and he has a tough test ahead of him in the form of Khan, a young in-form finisher who has already amassed the most knockouts and finishes in ONE history.
Pang’s long 34-bout career has thrown up a lifetime of competitive experience for the Aussie, who says he’s ready to prove that he’s still world championship calibre at the age of 40.
“It is not about the fame or anything like that,” he said.
“It is more about proving myself, and I still think I’ve got it.”
